Kalido's Business Information Modeler

Today, I received an update from Kalido on the Business Information Modeler Engine. This is what Kalido claims about the product.

"Kalido Business Information Modeler provides a graphical design interface that can be used to develop and refine business requirements for new and existing information. Instead of modeling data and their structures, the Kalido Business Information Modeler allows you to model the actual parts of your business; customers, products, assets, transactions, even people – and define how you want to see information in context. Even better, the Kalido Business Information Modeler can be used to change and update your model directly against the Kalido Dynamic Information Warehouse, allowing you ultimate flexibility in meeting the information needs of your business. The Kalido Business Information Modeler dramatically improves your ability to meet the needs of your business when it requires it – not when how it’s stored determines it".

The product is due for March 2008. I am waiting to experiment on the new features it claims. I will be evaluating the product on the following questions.

1. Can an in-house data warehouse be easily migrated into Kalido?
2. Will the business layer completely abstract the data layer?
3. Is it just a visual aid for creating/maintaining your data model?
4. Will the data in the warehouse be used by the tool to help the modeler provide real-time feedback on the errors and the inconsistencies of the new model that he plans to implement?

I will be writing more on this interesting product after I get a practical hands-on. Visit www.kalido.com for more details.

MDM War

A market research firm estimates the market size of MDM related products to peak $ 1 billion by end of 2008. Though MDM is relatively a new zone of investment for most of the organizations, the immense value behind such a venture has been pro-actively noticed. Some of the companies which have their MDM product suite are

• SAP - SAP Netweaver MDM
  
• Kalido - Kalido MDM
  
• IBM - IBM MDM (WPC, WCC)

• Microsoft- Stratature
  
• Oracle - Universal Customer Master.

One common aspect that could be found in these line of products are that most of them have been acquired. SAP launched its first MDM set of products in 2002 and had to quickly withdraw because of operational issues. Then it acquired A2i in 2004 and then repackaged A2i's product as its own. IBM acquired DWL Inc, to get hold of PIM (Product Information Management) and CDI (Customer Data Integration). Microsoft acquired Stratature and Oracle (with Customer Data Hub's not-so-good success) gained inroads into Siebel's UCM, post-acquisition.

These acquisitions have also been in line with the product suite that the companies already own. Oracle's merger with Siebel clearly will put itself on top, in the CRM and Customer Data Management space, while SAP can leverage its ERP customer base to bundle the MDM cake.

In the following weeks, I shall be understanding each of the tools in detail to find out which one has the killer technology and experience to be crowned the "MDM Maharaja". Or will they be all a bunch of Sultans aiming to just take a share of the $1 billion jewel?